Soups & Co-Ops

I made this avocado soup from Great Greens cookbook from my local library.  It's the Corn & Spinach with Avocado Soup on pg. 63. It's a great book, Great Greens...and it's not vegetarian recipes.  As with many chowders, this soup has bacon in it...mmm...and thyme, corn, fresh spinach, chicken broth, I added chicken, too.  The coolest part of this recipe was the red bell pepper paste you dollop on top--WOW. 

Along food, one of my favorite blogs is Stephmodo.  The author also blogs on the scrumptious Zupas blog, sharing recipes and food ideas, along with a few other ladies.  Zupas is a local (Salt Lake & Utah Valleys) soup salad sandwich chain.  After hearing some hype, Ryan took me to Zupas for the first time on my birthday a couple of months ago, and I was not disappointed.  Since soups are our all time favorite type of food to eat together, I now have told him that if I'm on my death bed, please bring me a bowl of Zupas' Thai Lobster Curry.

Also, has anyone joined a food co-op or buy veggies via a CSA?  I've been hearing about some popping up around my area. How do they work out for you and do you use all your food?  Does anyone do halvsies with another family?  If you're in Utah Valley, check out Jacob's Cove Heritage Farm and Bountiful Baskets.  Maybe I should start a soup co-op.

Summer Herb Garden

Not much gardening  you can do when you live in a condo, but I decided I'd try to grow some herbs on my windowsill (the balcony is out of the question with the kids always out there).  I bought basil and chives seed kits  from Target for $1 back in May.  Each kit included a tiny pot, seeds, soil disc, and plastic "greenhouse." I've enjoyed watching them grow.

I was particularly excited to eat the sweet basil (middle) and after about 1.5 months and 2 pot transplants, I felt she was ready for harvesting.  So I made this garlic lemon basil tomato zucchini spinach butter olive oil chicken pasta in the crock pot just to taste our little baby.  Deeelish!  (Tastes better than it looks).

Please don't judge my bad food photography : )

Summer Foods: Quinoa

On the left is quinoa salad with onions, cilantro?, and garlic. Kind of like a tabouleh I guess. The quinoa I bought from the dry bulk bins at the Winco in Orem (stands for Wyoming Idaho Nevada California Oregon--but where will the "U" for Utah fit in?).  I hadn't had quinoa since my mission in Switzerland over a decade ago, where someone who made it for us ranted and raved about it. Come to think of it, one of my Botany professors at BYU used to praise quinoa for its qualities...hmmm, is it addictive?  I dunno, but it's different, a good summer food, good in soups and salads, and you can substitute it for anything you'd use rice in, only it's a million times better for your body. Here are some quinoa recipes, though I think it's kind of an "on-the-fly-I forgot-to-buy-rice staple. 

The right (above) is a salad with my favorite salad dressing: Brianna's Homestyle Poppyseed salad dressing.  Drinkable.

One day, I got bored and decided to combine the two.

Hey, you two people (sometimes one) who read this, what's your favorite summer food?

Just Ruche-less

I'm not bitter, but I totally entered Ruche's Name That Dress contest thinking I would win, but didn't.  Out of 700+ entries, "Lemonade & Freckles Dress" won over my imaginative, travel-inspiring, gracefully semi-pretentious submissions:

1) Cape May Tea Time Dress

2) The Inn on Fifth Dress

3) Stroll in Cape Cod Dress
 
No, I wasn't going to wear the dress if I'd won.  I was going to get a gift card and get something else.  If they made me take the dress, I would have sewn it into a pair of cute little skirts for my girls, or a pillow cover for my bed, and every time I'd throw myself onto my camel-back-shaped second-hand bed, I'd imagine myself here, here, or here.  But not now.
 
Ruche people, this is what comes to mind when I hear "Lemonade & Freckles:"

  
Maybe you thought the winner meant FRECKLED LEMONADE:

• 2/3 c. lemon juice
• 3/4 c. sugar (or sugar substitute)
• 2 quarts cold water
• 1 c. sliced strawberries (fresh)
• 1 c. smashed strawberries (fresh)

To smash strawberries: place in pitcher, and mash with potato masher. Add remaining ingredients. Mix all together, and let chill for 2 - 3 hours. Stir before serving.

Very refreshing for a Summer barbecue, or a day at the beach. Recipe courtesy leesermarie, cooks.com
 
Oh! The horror!

Hawaii

One month ago today we took our trip to Hawaii to visit family and friends and here I am just now telling you about it. We had a great time, ate some ono (delish) food, Keira & Kainoa loved the beach, and were sad to leave. But it will be there for our next trip, right?

Highlights:
♥Seeing our friends, the Apanas, get sealed in the Laie LDS Temple. Ryan and I got to know Shelsea & Clayton before we left Hawaii a couple of years ago. Clayton got baptized, and they have been working towards going to the temple to seal their family together since. Seeing friends get sealed in the temple with their two young children is definitely a special experience, and I have to say that was probably the highlight of our trip. Don't ask me why I forgot my camera that day.

♥Shark Cage--I thought I'd never do it, but Ryan convinced me to take a boat 2 miles out of North Shore and jump into a cage to "swim" with some sharks. We swam with them for about 30 minutes. About 15-20 Galapagos sharks, ranging from 5-12 feet long. The guys (Hawaii Shark Encounter) said that they've fallen in the water before while feeding them, but that the sharks aren't aggressive, which put my mind and stomach at ease. I've seen sharks at aquariums before, but something more intriguing about being in the same water as them, able to reach out and touch one if I wanted to...and believe me, I wanted to. Their tiger-like eyes were the most intriguing thing, and watching their graceful movement up close was worth the scare.

♥I'm sorry, but food is always going to be on my highlights list of anything. You just can't find some of my favorite dishes prepared the way I like them but in Hawaii. Without going into much detail, at the top of our list were strangely all soups:

Phô--(pronounced fuh) Vietnamese soup--beef broth, beef, rice noodles, onions, with fresh basil, bean sprouts, lemon, and usually some hot sauce. Ryan likes phô from Ba Le, a kind of Vietnamese/French Indonesian chain. But my favorite phô is at Fort Street Cafe, right by Hawaii Pacific University, where I STARTED getting my Masters in Teaching English as a Second Language (before I met Ryan).

Tom Ka--a Thai soup. It has to be from Phuket Thai in Mililani Town Ctr. My favorite is vegetable, but you can get chicken or shrimp. The broth is coconut milk, with ginger, bamboo shoots, mushrooms, peppers, green onions. Ryan knows, if I'm ever on my deathbed to have some Fedex'd to me.

Kim chee ji gae--Kim chee soup--preferably from my favorite Korean place, So Gong Dong, at McCully Shopping Center on Kapiolani Blvd. It's a hot (have you had kim chee before?) soup, beef broth based (I think), with onions, Chinese cabbage, kim chee and other veggies, with noodles. Ry and I used to be the only non-Koreans eating there when we'd go for a late night dinner at their previous location, but not anymore.

There are many more, I mean, I haven't even gotten into Hawaiian food, but that's for another post.

♥Last but not least, I had a nice stroll sneezing down memory lane while going through old dusty boxes of mine that my father has so kindly been storing for years. He is moving to West Jordan next summer, so it was high time I cleared out his townhouse. Amongst my dozens of journals, high school and college papers and books, even elementary school stuff, I found the engagement pictures Ryan and I took in Makaha in 2005. That was before I decided, "To heck with the announcements and cake and reception," and we had a cozy little luncheon at Turtle Bay Resort after we were sealed in the temple. My sister took these photos for us...they make me happy.

Frankly Speaking

Ryan and I were having fun looking up Dodger Dogs and Chicago Style hot dogs on you tube and he found this:

Cookies For Me!! Thank you, Ili!

Okay, my cousin is definitely getting the Best Christmas Gift Award this year. Yesterday, I was sitting at my computer looking at trendyfabrics.com, when an ad for Big Island Candies popped up on the sidebar. What destiny...my cursor clicked on it right away, and I reminisced about eating their delectable, dipped biscotti-like cookies every Christmas at ComTel, where I've worked for the past 4 years. Every Christmas, one of our customers would send a box of assorted cookies, and guess who'd eat them all. I'd take handfuls back to my desk...several times a day. I don't think anyone knew. They have a dark chocolate cookie dipped in white chocolate (my fave), coffee dipped (my #2), chocolate on regular shortbread cookie, and more, but those are my faves. They're so addicting. So, I considered buying a box for myself--you can buy yourself something for Christmas!! But I decided the shipping would be too much to Utah, and just closed the page. I go to the kitchen b/c of course looking at those naughty little things made me hungry...and like 15 minutes later, the doorbell rings. "Who could that be?" Keira and I look at each other, I open the door, and there's a UPS guy standing there holding a box, and on it says, "Big Island Candies." What the?? Who the?? There is a God!! I really for the first time in a long time thanked God sincerely, like, how did you do that? I couldn't believe it! I was jumping while I opened it...who's it from? My cousin, Ili and her husband, Eddie, in Aiea. And inside were my three favorites. How did you know? I've already eaten half the box and it hasn't been 24 hours yet. Mahalo, cuz!